On How to Find the Frequency and Existence of Words and Phrases Lordy, Lordy, Buckeroos, and a happy day to you! Today's theme is secrets. Let me share a secret with you, but don't share our secret with anyone I've blocked. That would be bad. But unlike a priest who admonishes a child not to share their secret lest the child's family be cursed, I shall merely be sad. It's called the Google Ngram Viewer. Ever wonder about variations on a word--for instance, symmetric versus symmetrical? The dictionary says they are both fine, but what do folks use in practice? The Ngram Viewer will tell you. It's not perfect, but it's the best there is to date. And you can search date ranges, which is especially helpful for historical fiction (so you don't mistakenly use "home run" [mid-1800s] or "all in" [1903] in a book set in the early 1800s):